~Breakfast with Santa ~

This is our 3rd annual trip to Buckhead Diner for Breakfast with Santa. When you arrive they have bubbles blowing off the roof for snow. Anslee got her balloon and then decided she needed to wait outside for Santa to arrive.

He's here!! It is so exciting to see the children jumping up and down as he shows up in the firetruck.

We are shown to our seats and have hot chocolate ~ with all you can eat marshmallows :-) and pastries.

Before breakfast is served, Santa makes his way to each table for a quick visit.

Since the children hardly eat anything they have plenty of time to go outside and play in the "snow" until it is their turn to sit with Santa.Finally it is Andrew and Anslee's turn to sit and read their Christmas lists to Santa and talk with him. In the car ride home, Andrew said that he is always worried that he wasn't good enough to get presents from Santa on Christmas morning and how he feels so much better after talking with Santa and hearing Santa say that he's been good this year. After Andrew was finished talking, Anslee said "I misbehave a lot but I don't think Santa saw it because he said I've been good too!"

Violin Concert

We met Keith's sister and family at Phipps to watch our neice's violin concert.
Andrew and Anslee were so excited!
It was so impressive to see how well she is playing now! There were all ages playing ~ the youngest was three.

China Trip - Part 1 - The First Morning

Today's blog will focus on the morning of 11/23. We were taken to a government building where a homecoming ceremony was held honoring all of the children who were adopted from the Fuling orphanage. After the ceremony they took us to see the Olympic venues.

Building where the ceremony was held.

As I mentioned, 40 families traveled to China. People traveled from the US, UK, Holland, and Australia. This photo gives a visual of all the families.

A picture of Anslee with one of the guides.

The Director from The Bridge of Love Adoption Service (A Chinese run agency) gives the opening remarks. Alice interprets, she was one of our primary guides for the trip.

The were many officials on hand.

After several speeches, I think they love to give formal speeches, we were treated to a performance.

After the performance, all of the adopted girls were asked to come on stage and were given a commemorative engraved piece of crystal. Anslee is in pink on the right.

Family photo after the ceremony. All of the families were given red scarves to wear as red is a very symbolic color in China.

After the ceremony we visited the site of the 2008 summer games in Beijing.

Andrew and Anslee at the Birds Nest.

This is a great picture of the Water Cube as it also show the traditional grey China sky.

Stay tuned for a blog on the afternoon trip to the Great Wall!!

China Trip - Travel to China

Hi all! I know that people have been anxious for us to upload pics from our homecoming trip to China. For those of you that were not aware, we made a return trip over Thanksgiving week with about 40 other families who have adopted from the same orphanage in Fuling China. I'm going to post a series of blogs over the next few days/weeks that focus on specific parts/days of our trip. I hope you enjoy.

This is how the trip started, at about 4:30am with the kids sound asleep!

Breakfast was courtesy of the airport BK lounge. We needed our energy for the 30 hours it will take to get from our house to the hotel in Beijing.

We upgraded the seats to economy plus, which gave 5 more inches of leg room. On a 14 hour flight, it's a must!

Terri built a sleeping canopy. Below Terri and Anslee are sound asleep.

We are getting close! After flying at an altitude of 57,000 feet over the North Pole, the kids can finally see the ground.

Finally on the ground in the Beijing airport! Look how tired the kids faces are.

Andrew was hungry and decided to try the Chinese version of KFC. I warned him that it was not the same as back home. No all white meat chicken breast here.

After deciding that the KFC was less than edible, we found a McDonald's. Basic cheese burger and fries are pretty similar to the US version. At this point Anslee can barely function. Our internal clocks are out of sync with the local time, which was about 7-8pm.

Happy Halloween!!

Can you guess which pumpkin is Andrew's and which is Anslee's? Keith did the one that has fu carved on it. Fu means blessed and happiness in Chinese.

Happy Fall

We went to a great pumpkin farm this weekend. Everyone around here usually goes to Burt's, but it has become so crowded there that I find it more stressful than fun.
This farm had a hayride to the lake to feed the fish, an apple cannon and of course lots of pumpkins. We were talking to the owner and he said not to tell many people about his farm because he didn't want to get as busy at Burt's. I figure only a few people read my blog so they shouldn't get much traffic from here :-)
They also have a cut your own Christmas tree farm in the winter.

Turtles

A couple of years ago we went to Ponce Inlet, FL to see the Marine Science Center. Since then, Andrew has LOVED turtles. He was so excited when a neighbor found turtles hatching in their yard and brought them over to for us to see.


After the kids played (very gently) and watched them for a little bit we took them back and let them go. Hopefully they survived!!
Anslee and the neighbor who brought them over are hilarious to watch. They either love each other or are mortal enemies. Today was a good day :-)

Three year olds say the greatest things!

Yesterday Anslee saw an outdoor ashtray and asked me what it was for. I told her and she said "I am going to smoke cigarettes when I grow up". I explained how bad it would be for her and thought we were done. She waited a second and watched a guy smoking and said "But I really want that smoke to come out of my nose."

At breakfast time, Anslee will come up to me and hold out something like marshmallows and a cookie and say "which one should I have for breakfast?".

Anslee loves this Laurie Berkner song called "I'm not perfect". One day in Sunday school the teacher told the class that only God is perfect. So now when Anslee is talking about God she calls him "perfect". When I picked her up from Vacation Bible School on the first day she ran to me yelling "Mom, Perfect was here!!" I asked her if that was so exciting and she said "Well, I didn't get to see him".

She loves to watch the DVD of our trip to China and wants me to tell her the story. One night after we talked about it, she asked about being on the steps of the Elementary school waiting for someone to take her to the orphanage. I asked her if she thought she was scared. She said "No I wasn't, cause Perfect had his arms around me!"

The tree house...or as our neighbors say...the tree deck

Keith has mostly finished the tree house. Andrew decided to spend some of his birthday money on furnishing and decorating it. He asked me to drive around to different stores so he could find the most comfortable chairs. It took us a couple of hours to find the perfect ones!

Do you want to see something really scary?!

Anslee and her cousin Ashlyn!! They are two peas in a pod. You never know what is going to happen when they are together. Our nieces, Ashlyn and Alex, spent the night last night. At any point when we couldn't see Ashlyn and Anslee yesterday, Keith or I would run around the house to check on them. Usually they were in some random room or closet with the door locked!! Luckily we didn't find any huge catastrophes when we found them. Hopefully there isn't a surprise waiting for us.